I started with a Janome Marie Osmond Quilter's Companion and the Janome 200 embroidery machine. LOVE the MO, like the 200 embroidery machine, but found that I wanted to do more than the 4x4 fields. So this spring I splurged and got the Janome 9900 and LOVE it!!! Yes, it's a combo machine, it has a slightly larger throat, but not the 11 inch of some of the others, but it is an awesome machine. I had gone in to demo the 8900 that hubby and I had decided I needed and ended up with the 9900. First thing that I did was to design an embroidery piece in the software. Fun, fun!